Emotional Cartography: technologies of the self

New book for psychogeographers, critical cartographers and those interested in applications of technologies of the self:

The book is the outcome of a research process which aimed to reach a deeper understanding of a project called ‘Bio Mapping’, which since 2004, has involved thousands of participants in over 16 different countries. Bio Mapping emerged as a critical reaction towards the currently dominant concept of pervasive technology, which aims for computer ‘intelligence’ to be integrated everywhere, including our everyday lives and even bodies. The Bio Mapping project investigates the implications of creating technologies that can record, visualise and share with each other our intimate body-states.

To practically explore this subject, I invented and built the Bio Mapping device, which is a portable and wearable tool recording data from two technologies: a simple biometric sensor measuring Galvanic Skin Response and a Global Positioning System (GPS). The bio-sensor, which is based on a lie-detector, measures changes in the sweat level of the
wearers’ fingers…

The whole book is available for free.

Stress levels on a walkabout.

The equipment. Finger cuffs, GPS and data logger.

Lectures on critique and Foucault

A blog has been tracing the genealogy of critique in the form of written out lectures. The most recent two have reached the Frankfurt School and Foucault’s engagement with it.

Here’s the first lecture that starts to deal with Foucault.

Conference: Foucault 25 Years On

A conference will be held this June at the Australian Centre for Post-Colonial and Globalisation Studies. Foucault: 25 Years On will reflect on Foucault’s legacy with a keynote address by Barry Hindess and a whole day of presentations.

Twenty five years after his death, reflecting on Foucault is an enormous task. His influence permeates disparate and innumerable fields and informs so much of our thinking, along with that of many great theorists who have followed him. Foucault’s influence is one of ramifying and far reaching interdisciplinary complexity, but he draws us together too, providing a common theoretical baseline to diverse disciplinary endeavours. He shows us the connections between things. Just as his life and his work connects up theoretical pursuits as diverse as queer theory and postcolonial studies, so his influence draws together and draws bridges between theorists. In so doing, Foucault’s legacy muddies the theoretical waters, forcing strange synergies and theoretical configurations such as the antifoundational humanist. Growing from the murky ferment of French colonial history, the father of poststructuralism’s story is as complex as that encounter, and his legacy is as mutating, unsettling and transformative. A reflection on Foucault needs to accommodate a consideration of the enormity of the shadow which such a legacy casts over continuing intellectual production.

J.G. Ballard dies

I learned this morning that the great English writer J.G. Ballard has died. He was 78.

Ballard has no discernible Foucauldian connections that I can think of, instead I mark his passing in this space because I imagine that many readers here would know or appreciate Ballard’s work.

Ballard always seemed to me an English writer rather than a British one. He had colonial experience (brought up as a boy in Shanghai he was imprisoned in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, which he fictionalised in Empire of the Sun, later made into a movie by Steven Spielberg). His early work on Ambit magazine, his life in the London suburb of Shepperton, home to the British movie industry, the Atrocity Exhibition, all these seemed very English. His work in the 1960s for example was a kind of “fantastic” translation of the Angry Young Men.

I knew Ballard was ill and elderly, but for a while it seemed like he would live on. His death is not so much a shock as an opportunity for reflection.

The geographer David Wood offers a fine tribute to him here. Wood suggests that Ballard prefigured many later writers of alienation, especially those that worked within the urban or better, suburban landscape, and I would agree. There is also something for those of us who identify with the American space mission as not something shiny and successful, or not only that, but also resulting in abandoned spacedromes and rusting rockets.

For those unfamiliar with JGB you should try the Re/Search re-issued book The Atrocity Exhibition (1990), shown above. Illustrated by medical artist Phoebe Gloekner (Ballard himself could have had a medical career) the book is a collection of short, disturbing pieces interspersed with photos of abandoned airports (no drained swimming pools however!).

The first American edition of this book was pulped by Doubleday in 1970 when they learned of the piece here “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan.” Ironically, at the the 1980 Republican Conference, a version of the piece (minus its title and running sideheads) and, Ballard says “furnished with the seal of the Republican Party,” was distributed to delegates. “I’m told that it was accepted for what it resembled, a psychological position paper on the candidate’s subliminal appeal, commissioned from some maverick think-tank.”

Thus the Ballardian world.

Other tributes: The Washington Post, AtrocityExhibition.

New Book: Space in theory

New book published by Rodopi which I think is a Dutch publisher:

WEST-PAVLOV, Russell, Space in Theory. Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze, Amsterdam / New York, Rodopi (Spatial Practices: An Interdisciplinary Series in Cultural History, Geography and Literature), 2009, 275 p.

ISBN 978-90-420-2545-5

Space in Theory: Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze seeks to give a detailed but succinct overview of the role of spatial reflection in three of the most influential French critical thinkers of recent decades. It proposes a step-by-step analysis of the changing place of space in their theories, focussing on the common problematic all three critics address, but highlighting the significant differences between them. It aims to rectify an unaccountable absence of detailed analysis to the significance of space in their work up until now.
Space in Theory argues that Kristeva, Foucault and Deleuze address the question: How are meaning and knowledge produced in contemporary society? What makes it possible to speak and think in ways we take for granted? The answer which all three thinkers provide is: space. This space takes various forms: psychic, subjective space in Kristeva, power-knowledge-space in Foucault, and the spaces of life as multiple flows of becoming in Deleuze.
This book alternates between analyses of these thinkers� theoretical texts, and brief digressions into literary texts by Barrico, de Beauvoir, Beckett, Bodro�ic or Bonnefoy, via Borges, Forster, Gide, Gilbert, Glissant, Hall, to Kafka, Ondaatje, Perec, Proust, Sartre, Warner and Woolf. These detours through literature aim to render more concrete and accessible the highly complex conceptulization of contemporary spatial theory.
This volume is aimed at students, postgraduates and researchers interested in the areas of French poststructuralist theory, spatial reflection, or more generally contemporary cultural theory and cultural studies.

---

Contents
Introduction: Entering Space
Kristeva�s Chora
Kristeva�s Kehre
Foucault�s Spatial Discourse
Foucault�s Discursive Spaces
Deleuze�s Territories
Deleuze�s Intensities
In Place of a Conclusion �
Bibliography
Index

Radical Philosophy Conference

The Radical Philosophy Conference will be held Saturday 9 May 2009 at Birkbeck College in London. The theme is “Power to the People?”

‘Power to the people!’ was once a revolutionary slogan, but reference to government by the people and for the people has long been an empty cliché of the post-revolutionary status quo. Numerous alternatives have been proposed: the proletariat, the workers, the masses, the soviets, the the nation, the community, the multitude, the commons… And now? How might we assess the different conceptions of political change embodied in these often conflicting ideas? What is the political and philosophical significance of ‘the people’ and related terms today?

Sessions include at least one on Foucault-related themes, chaired by Stuart Elden, on biopolitics and population:

3.45–5.00	Population & Biopolitics (chair: Stuart Elden, Durham)
‘Biopolitics, Diasporas and (Neo)Liberal Political Economy’ Couze Venn (Nottingham Trent)
‘Feminist Strategies Revisited – Sexopolitics, Multitude and Biopolitics’ Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez (Manchester)

Other talks are being given by Eric Swyngedouw and Gayatri Spivak.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

As many readers of this blog are likely to know, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick died a few days ago.  Here’s the obit from the New Yorker:

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick died in New York yesterday, at the age of fifty-eight, following a long battle with breast cancer. The literary critic, who taught most recently at the CUNY Graduate Center, is best known for her formative work in the field of queer theory (in the books “Between Men” and “Epistemology of the Closet”), including a number of provocative—and often scandalous—readings of classic literary texts.

There’s also a short note in Inside Higher Ed, with links to her wikipedia page.

Amazon update: it was a “hamfisted” glitch

An update on yesterday’s post about Amazon de-listing and de-ranking books with “adult” content that included health, sexuality studies and gay-themed books (including nonfiction).

AP is now reporting that Amazon admits that some 57,310 books were affected. An Amazon spokesman was quoted as saying it was due to an:

embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection…

This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search,” Herdener said. “Many books have now been fixed and we’re in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

AP (and other blogs) go on to point out however that this announcement was greeted with some scepticism by authors, one of whom claims this glitch goes back several months.

I did confirm that the History of Sexuality ranking, which was missing on Monday, has been restored.

Amazon have also denied that they were victims of a malicious hacker.

On a larger scope, this episode helps to reveal what Amazon is today: essentially an “online Wal-Mart” in the words of one former employee. No longer the company it once apparently was, he went on, “there is little accountability inside the bubble.” Yet it still has a huge influence on the publishing industry.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (hometown paper of Amazon) has the best and fullest explanation. Seems it occurred in Amazon.fr when an employee incorrently flagged gay books as “adult” (their term for porn, it is claimed).

Here’s the lead paras of the Seattle PI story:

I’ve spoken to an Amazon.com employee who works closely with the systems involved in the glitch. The employee asked me not to share his name because of company policies on talking with the media.

On Sunday afternoon at least 20 Amazon.com employees were paged alerting them that items, possibly many, were incorrectly being flagged as adult. The employees also received links to the Twitter discussion AmazonFail.

Thousands of people were angry that gay-themed books had disappeared from Amazon’s sales rankings and search algorithms. The number of Tweets on Sunday afternoon that had the term “AmazonFail” surpassed even those with the words “Easter” or “Jesus.”

By this time, Amazon.com had upgraded the problem to Sev-1. (Amazon.com breaks down its operational issues in terms of severity levels. Sev-3 means a problem affects a single user. Sev-2 is a problem that affects a company, or a lot of people. Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level.)

Amazon de-ranks hundreds of books, including Foucault

Seems Amazon has a new policy of de-ranking books they deem to have “adult” (erotic or sexual) content, including many non-fiction books (a list here, also see a community-created listing of books on Amazon itself).

The importance of this is that de-ranked books will no longer appear in search lists, or rankings (eg the top 100 list, or bestseller lists) no matter their popularity. I confirmed that Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol 1 no longer has a ranking. Meanwhile “Discipline and Punish,” which features descriptions of physical violence and torture still has a ranking (#4,799 bestselling book).

Apart from the fact that excluding books is a bad idea in the first place, the result has been to seemingly bias exclusions of gay-themed books even if they contain no erotica. “Censored” books incluide:

Annie Proulx Brokeback Mountain
Randy Shilts The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (now an Oscar-winning movie)
Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Hedgwick
Queer Theory: An Introduction by Annamarie Jagose
The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life by Michael Warner
The Transgender Studies Reader: transgender theory:
Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America by Larry Gross

As well as numerous books of fiction.

For more info, including a petition, see here.

Foucault vs. Baudrillard, round 10

Knockout punch for Baudrillard? Accuses Foucault of being non-normative and prescriptive and therefore powerless.

However this leads me to another problem with Foucault’s theories which has been commented on many times before. Namely, that it does not begin from any normative basis. This has two consequences which are extremely important:

(1) His language mirrors that which it criticises. Baudrillard put it extremely succinctly – provided you’ve wasted enough time figuring out how decipher post-structuralist jargon:

“Foucault’s discourse is a mirror of the power relations he describes. Its strength and seduction lie there, and not in its ‘truth’ index….. No, its strength and its seduction are in the analysis which unwinds the subtle meanderings of its object, describing it with tactile and tactical exactness, where seduction feeds analytical force and WHERE LANGUAGE ITSELF GIVES BIRTH TO THE OPERATION OF NEW POWERS. Such is also the operation of myth, right down to the symbolic effectiveness described by Levi-Strauss. Foucault’s is not therefore a discourse of truth but a mythic discourse in the strong sense of the word, and I secretly believe that it has no illusions about the effects of truth it produces.” (Baudrillard, Forget Foucault p.30 – My Emphasis)

The point is that since Foucault’s theories claim to be ones of praxis if his discourse does in fact directly “mirror the power relations he describes” the solutions he proposes will necessarily be of this nature also. Here’s an analogy: imagine all you ever learnt was a very strict variant of neo-classical economic theory and you wished to help build a socialist economy. You’d necessarily be unable to do so because the very language which you use to organise economic functions already contains too many presuppositions. Similarly Foucault’s language is one of “power” and yet the problems he highlights are also ones of “power”. Thus the term “power” is completely ambivalent – it is both good AND bad. (Towards the end of his life he began to realise this, especially in his last few lecture series, but these are generally ignored in most people’s use of Foucault’s thought).

From a discussion in the Left Business Observer (LBO) list.